Sophocracy, from the Greek sophos, meaning wise, and krátos, meaning power. Literally meaning governed by the wise. Sophocracy aims to provide for the needs of the governed by passing legislation and making revisions objectively based on the results of the legislation.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Government Focused on Results

Currently most political systems in the world focus on debate, and guiding philosophies to make legislative decisions. Most governments are split into two or more political ideologies fighting over what bills they should pass into law. This is unscientific and not focused on results as much as being right.

The Sophocratic Method, is focused on results. This method of building and analyzing legislation is based on the scientific method. The scientific method is the guide by which all scientific discoveries have come about for at least the last thousand years. It focuses on building a hypothesis, and experimenting to find empirical and mesurable data to accept or reject the hypothesis. The Sophocratic Method makes the legislative process objective, and allows for old ideas to be replaced by newer and more effective ones. The Sophocratic Method is:

1. Determine the problem to be solved, and set goals to reach.2. Propose a method to solve this problem.3. Design the legislation that you think will meet the goals of your problem. Set a date to check if the goals have been met.4. Pass the legislation.5. On the set date accept, reject, or amend the legislation, based on if it met the requirement of the projected goals.

With the current system of debate there is no set way of measuring and analyzing the results of a specific piece of legislation. This is blindly following a philosophy which has never been specifically tested. This system is not interested in finding more efficient or productive legislation.

The Sophocratic Method looks for specific results right from the beginning. Before legislation is passed certain measurable data points are set as a goal. The effectiveness of the legislation is checked at the end of the legislations goal date. At this point it is accepted, rejected, or amended. This allows for a recordable and verifiable results.

Lets assume that a government determined that high school dropout rate was at 50%. Lets compare how a Sophocratic government would handle this, next to the current system.

Under the current system you may have one party would say that you should do nothing and let society handle this growing number of drop outs. Another party may suggest lowering low performing teachers salaries. And a third party may suggest nationalizing all of the high schools, and replacing all of the teachers with an online study program. All based on the political ideology of the party. Now all of these politicians are lawyers and businessmen and have not had any experience in the education field. In the end they come out with some compromised piece of legislation which does nothing to fix the dropout rates, but they all get to go back to there constituents and say they passed something that should help.

In a Sophocratic system you would have professionals working in the "House of Educational Representatives." All of which has a degree in education, educational psychology, or sociology. They have had experience with this situation and knew about the problem before some interest group brought it to their attention. They determine that they would be happy with a 30% drop out rate in the next 5 years, and work to design a piece of legislation to reach that goal. After it has passed they monitor the results of the new law. When 5 years is up they look at the results and determine either that it met the goal, it failed and needed to be replaced, or could improve and is amended.

Government should be focused on results. The scientific method has been providing results for thousands of years. The most effective and efficient method of governing is with the Sophocratic Method.

Please comment, discussion is open. This idea is still in its infancy, and needs to be talked through many times.